Stored value cards distributed, for example, by financial institutions, telephone companies, or other providers of goods and services are typically forwarded to retail merchants for sale to individual purchasers. These stored value cards allow the holder prepaid access to existing phone networks for making phone calls, for example, eliminating the need to carry cash on hand. Additionally, stored value cards may be used to provide authorization for the rental or purchase of goods and services, or may be used as a gift certificate granting the holder credit for various goods and services.
Stored value cards are typically purchased by merchants similar to any other good, and displayed for sale in the merchants' stores. In order to reduce their exposure to the loss of the valuable cards through theft or fraud, it is typically the practice for merchants to sell non-activated, or “zero balance” stored value cards which have no intrinsic value until they are activated by the merchant's magnetic, bar code, and/or radio-frequency card reader. It is now a common practice to sell such cards to purchasers with the activation taking place at the merchant counter at the time of sale. Moreover, as a result of this practice, the merchant reduces his overhead because the value of the inactivated stored value cards is not payable to the wholesale vendor of the cards until the card itself is actually distributed by the merchant at the point of sale.
Stored value cards are often sold mounted in or on some sort of card carrier and/or protective display package. These cards, however, may still be susceptible to theft and/or fraud due to tampering. For example, the confidential code may be pre-accessed by a malicious person such that the purchased value of the unsuspecting legitimate purchaser may be later stolen. In order to reduce the chance of theft or fraud, it is typically the practice that a stored value card is not activated until purchase. That is, upon sale of a stored value card to a purchaser, the merchant electronically activates the stored value card with a specific balance paid for by the purchaser, and the purchaser may utilize the stored value using a confidential code provided in the card. Additionally, a database containing activation codes and balance data is typically maintained by a processing company, which is notified electronically by the merchant when the card has been activated. Alternatively, the processing company may perform the activation of the card upon receiving an electronic message from the merchant that the particular card has been purchased.
In the purchasing of stored value cards, it is often desirable to purchase more than one card in a single purchase. As such, stored value card multipacks (i.e. display packages containing multiple cards) have been created. Such multipacks allow a purchaser to purchaser more than one card in a single purchase, such as several cards each having a relatively low redemption value as opposed to a single card having a high value. However, there are additional complexities in the packaging, activation, data-keeping, and fraud protection of such stored value card multipacks, and one or more of these tasks is typically performed manually during the manufacturing of the stored value card multipacks which may enable fraud and theft at the manufacturing stage. Further, while stored value card multipacks have been manufactured with data printed on an inside surface of the packaging, such data has been packaging inventory control data that was not used in automating the manufacturing of the stored value card multipacks.
As discussed above, fraud and theft is a common problem associated with stored value cards and, unfortunately, may occur during the manufacturing and/or packaging of the cards. For example, it is possible that the bar codes of the individual cards may be copied and produced on duplicate cards. As such, there is a need for a system that reduces fraud and theft during manufacturing and packaging of stored value cards, including stored value card multipacks. Additionally, there is a need to provide a stored value card with a high degree of fraud protection so that it can be readily observed if the card has been tampered with.